


next time

by fraud



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, DCU (Comics), Green Lantern (Comics), Justice League: War
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-05
Updated: 2014-11-05
Packaged: 2018-02-24 06:00:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2570732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fraud/pseuds/fraud
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's November, and there are some things they're still figuring out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	next time

**Author's Note:**

> short, simple, self-serving gratuitousness. bc we all have shitty days.

"So," Hal asks, casually leaning his ass against the Watchtower's console. "What were you for Halloween?" 

With his lenses up, Bruce can afford to cast a disbelieving glance at Hal in his peripheral and still appear to be working. "Really?"

"What?" Hal is all quirked lip and cocked hip, like he knows Bruce isn't paying all of his attention to the scans cluttering up the Watchtower’s computer screens. "You're going to tell me _you_ don't celebrate Halloween?"

Trusting the scans to alert him to any anomalies, Bruce leans away from the console and affords Hal the full direction of his gaze. "Is that so hard to believe?"

"Uh, yeah." Crossing his arms over his chest, Hal gives Bruce a skeptical once over he's not entirely used to getting, especially not in full Batman uniform. "Incredibly."

Jordan's arms fit in a tight knit across his chest, his gloved hands tucked against his biceps like a link across the symbol emblazoned on his uniform. Whatever upper bodywork Hal has been doing, Bruce has to begrudgingly admit, it's working. They've both still got their masks on- the Watchtower is secure, especially the control room- but neither of them are without boundaries. Still, there's something easy about Hal's smirk, something teasing that Bruce has come to recognize.

"Ohhhh," Hal leans a fraction closer, not that he originally left much room between his ass and Bruce’s hand to do so. "I get it. Too much competition."

Bruce is tempted to lower the cowl, just so Jordan can be subject to the full brunt of his scathingly arched eyebrow.

"No? You think you can hold your own with the sexy Batmen of Gotham?"

A lesser man would give in to the exasperated groan that crawls up his throat, but Bruce manages to dull it to a longsuffering exhale- much to Hal's amusement. Bruce had tried so hard to get out in front of that one- throwing a bigger party that boasted a charity costume contest, throwing enough publicity and promotion at it to hopefully drown out the other, stranger parts of Gotham’s Halloween party scene.

"Yeah, don't think I didn't see that flyer, Spooky." Hal laughs, taking particular glee in the set of Bruce's shoulders. "Gotham loves itself a party, doesn't it?"

How Lantern masks manage to be so expressive is a mystery Batman has already sunk enough time and energy into; yet, here he is again.

Ignoring Hal's grin, Bruce mildly supplies, "Gothamites love Halloween."

"Yeah," Hal agrees, with a pointed look at the tips of Bruce's cowl. "I kinda got that.”

Patience on the verge of being tried, Bruce straightens in his seat. "Are you done?"

Hal shrugs, shutting up but not making a move that would suggest any intention to leave. His attention stays on Bruce as his smile fades to something more neutral, albeit no less smug. Smug seems to be Hal Jordan’s baseline. Bruce leans into the console, returning his attention to the scans crawling through hundreds of thousands of radio frequencies back on Earth, cataloguing and categorizing emergencies based on vicinity and necessity of heroes. It takes two minutes and fifteen seconds, three shifts of his body, and more than a few false starts, before Hal finally says, "So you really didn't go out and trick or treat with Damian?"

Bruce can’t help the tick at the corner of his mouth when he regards Hal, in all seriousness. "You have _met_ my son, right?"

"Yeah....” Hal’s nod is slow, like he’s, for once in his life, reconsidering his previous statement. Bruce has the insane urge to check that the Earth hasn’t suddenly started spinning in the opposite direction. “I guess I just thought all kids liked trick or treating.”

“I wouldn’t let him hear you call him that.”

“Then I guess I better hope you two aren’t psychically linked.”

Bruce clicks around, minimizing a few windows. “Not currently.”

Hal’s obvious amusement undermines the slow shaking of his head. “You are _way_ too open to these hypotheticals to be as pragmatic as you’d have people believe.”

“Preparedness is part of pragmatism.” Bruce replies, as if by route.

If that exact phrase hasn’t been used to justify knocking each and every Robin on his or her ass, Hal will eat his entire goddamn mask. From where he’s got his arms crossed over his chest, Hal squeezes his own bicep—before realizing what he’s doing, and promptly uncrossing his arms.

“So you guys, what, stayed in all night and bonded over sharpening bat blades and practicing roundhouse kicking villains into C-collars?”

"No,” Bruce barely keeps himself from giving Hal the exasperated look he deserves—it likely wouldn’t translate for the Lantern anyway. “Damian was out."

Hal’s brow furrows. "I thought you said-"

Bruce sighs, abandoning the keyboard to lean back in his chair. " _Dick_ wanted to trick or treat, and Damian wanted extra patrol time. So, they worked out a suitable arrangement."

Hal can’t keep himself from laughing.

He can see it now. Dick pleading with Damian to go out, Damian steadfastly refusing, holding out until he’s sure he’s played his older, adoptive brother just the way he wants. Dick revealing his upper hand— coordinated costumes and a mandatory trick or treat route so prodigious that only vigilantes could hope to complete it. 

Still laughing, Hal says, “Hopefully you’re keeping the pictures under lock and key somewhere.”

“Nowhere I know of would be safe from Damian.” Bruce shakes his head, amusement lurking in his voice. “Alfred is the keeper of all incriminating childhood pictures.”

The way he says it, like he’d be more than happy to go through and weed out a select few pictures of himself if he knew where Alfred kept them and had the chance, makes Hal laugh even harder. Batman: fearsome vigilante and unparalleled strategist; cowed by his own loving, elderly butler. Like everything else about Bruce Wayne, it’s goddamn priceless.

There’s a smirk lurking in the corner of Bruce’s mouth, like he knows exactly what Hal is thinking—and he knows there’s no point in denying it. It’s the closest thing to a smile Hal’s gotten out of him since they both returned to the Watchtower, and with the cowl on, to boot. Smiles while Bruce has the cowl on are rare, but Hal wants to believe he’s getting better at making them appear.

"Y’know…” Hal reaches across the few inches that separate them and nudges Bruce’s gauntlet with his gloved knuckles. “If you were free, you could have called."

The blank lenses of Batman’s eyes stare at the point where white glove meets black reinforced bracer.

In truth, the thought hadn’t escaped him. With patrol taken care of, Damian supervised, and no otherwise pressing obligations to attend to, he _could_ have called. He could have found Hal and made it look like an accident, which, realistically, he could see himself doing before calling. He could have made it look like League business, which would have been a gross ruse, and an inappropriate use of resources, but effective nonetheless. He could have done any number of things, but—

But then there was Hal, with his arm slung around Kal’s shoulders, singing the praises of Barry’s Halloween party. Guilting the majority of the League into appearances, regardless of prior obligations, or the fact that such a large gathering of JL members outside of the Watchtower would be a boldfaced breach in protocol. Promising a good time and swearing he’d be there, come hell or high water.

Bruce doesn’t move his hand. He doesn’t raise his gaze, either. “You were busy.”

When he wants to, Hal can move quietly. Bruce hasn’t puzzled out if it’s a learned skill, or some form of willpower Hal taps into when he wants to not be heard. However he does it, he’s not making the effort now. A whisper of fabric against skin, boots shifting on the cool, steel floor; the subtle sound of movement, as much a warning as it is an announcement of Hal’s intention.

“Hey,” And then he’s right there, leaning into Bruce’s space, his shin pressed against Bruce’s in steady line of reassurance.

Ridiculous.

The second the words left his mouth, even as mildly as he had said them, Bruce knew what it would sound like.

The thing is, it wasn’t even a problem—Bruce had a productive night. He’d caught up on neglected WE materials, tuned the vehicles and assessed the jet’s autopilot system, reverse encrypted purchases that would otherwise look suspicious on WE’s books, run through Arkham’s security surveillance, and had a cup of tea with Alfred.

By all accounts, it was a _good_ night.

“I apologize if that sounded accusatory. I only meant,” Bruce looks up at Hal, who isn’t wearing his mask any longer, and he’d have noticed sooner if he hadn’t been avoiding eye contact. He keeps his lenses up. “That I understood you had plans.”

Backlit in the glow of the Watchtower’s super computer, Hal’s is a shape that has grown familiar—the breadth of his shoulders, the twist of his body, the purposefully haphazard brush of hair off his forehead. These are all parts of a person Bruce Wayne has come to know as Hal Jordan.

The opinionated, deceptively present, iron-willed Green Lantern.

“Next time,” Hal nudges Bruce’s leg with his own, an excuse to bid for attention he’s already got. His brown eyes meet Bruce’s, undaunted by the glow of the cowl’s lenses. “Call.”

No teasing, knowing smirk. No good-natured ribbing. Nothing more grand or ostentatious than quiet reassurance.

To lower his lenses now, with Hal’s sincerity laid bare and electric between them, feels like a cheat, so Bruce reaches up to push the cowl off, not bothering to fix the matted mess it’s likely made of his hair. After so long in the confines of his mask, the cool air is pleasant against his skin.

Slowly enough to be rebuffed, Bruce reaches for Hal, curving his palm around the back of Hal’s neck with the deliberate weight of invitation. Hal follows, allowing Bruce to guide their foreheads together, allowing Bruce the control. Here, suited up in the sterile control room of the Watchtower, he doesn’t smell like Bruce. The Bruce who uses stupidly expensive pomade, and always has the incriminating scent of coffee lingering on his breath. He smells like Batman; like leather, and sweat, and whatever rubbery substance the cowl is made out of. Hal can only find the parts of Bruce mixed in because he knows what to look for. He knows one can’t exist without the other.

When they kiss, it’s because Hal has notoriously poor impulse control and something about Bruce has always been frustratingly, _insufferably_ magnetic.

If Hal could think beyond the effortless opening of Bruce’s mouth under his, he might care that there are cameras recording every square millimeter of the Watchtower, including their little show. If Bruce’s warm, wet tongue didn’t routinely wreak havoc on his brain, Hal might care that somewhere along the way his hands abandoned their place on the console to bury themselves in Bruce’s thick, dark hair. If he could form a thought that didn’t feature him straddling Bruce’s muscled thighs and making up for lost opportunities, he might be embarrassed at just how invested he is in the idea.

But he can’t do any of those things, because kissing Bruce is like getting pulled into orbit.

Breathless, Hal bites at Bruce’s lip in a bid for self-control; a call back to the present, that backfires spectacularly. Bruce’s large, gauntleted hand tightens on the back of his neck, his other hand abandoning the armrest to feel its way up Hal’s thigh.

“Ah- that’s-“ Hal groans into Bruce’s mouth, releasing his grip on Bruce’s hair to brace a hand on his shoulder. “Fuck. S-stop.”

Bruce’s hand stills, his blue eyes burning with want.

For a man who routinely leaves only the lower half of his face exposed, the way Bruce’s mouth looks when kiss bruised and bitten really messes with Hal’s head.

“Okay.” Shutting his eyes hard enough to see colors, Hal wills himself to think past what the man in front of him _could_ be doing to him if he’d just shut up and let him. “So, I gotta say, I like where this is going. I mean- I _really_ like where this is going, and you’re about to find, uh, _hard_ evidence if your hand keeps up.”

Taking that as his cue, Bruce’s hand starts to move up Hal’s thigh again—only to be reluctantly stopped by Hal’s.

“No, see- I-” Hal swears, fingers tightening around Bruce’s wrist.

Normally, Batman wouldn’t miss an opportunity to pick at the frayed edges of Green Lantern’s concentration, but this isn’t a League meeting, and Bruce can see a failed strategy faster than any of them. Bruce releases Hal’s neck, shifting to carefully cradle Hal’s jaw in his hand. “You’re uncomfortable.”

Hal’s laugh is harsh in the still quiet of the Watchtower. “I’m about to rip through my suit—yeah, uncomfortable is the polite way to put it.”

Bruce, for all that he is a world-class detective, holds Hal’s gaze with a confused one of his own. “Then?” 

Huffing out a frustrated laugh, Hal shifts under Bruce’s hands, considering, for one truly insane moment, leaning back into Bruce’s inviting mouth and seeing where this leads. It’s an incredibly tempting thought. The reckless part of him that soars through space with only a ring and his own willpower to keep him from suffocating in the bottomless vacuum of space is in full favor.

“Then, unless you’re going to fuck me right here,” And Hal really shouldn’t have said that because, fuck, if Bruce doesn’t look like he’s seriously goddamn considering bending him over the console. Hal squeezes Bruce’s wrist, bringing him back to the Watchtower, where they _work_. “I need you in my room ASA-fucking-P.”

Bruce takes a deep breath and removes his hands from Hal, who is immediately reminded of why being responsible sucks.

This is already a terrible decision that Hal thoroughly regrets.

“Computer,” Bruce barks out, controlling the thread of arousal in his voice with gruff curtness. “Redirect alerts to League member: Superman. Include message: something came up, cover me. End command.”

_Message sent to League member: Superman_ , confirms a pleasant automated voice from the console.

Puzzled, Hal glances over his shoulder at the computer. “Since when does it do that?”

“Voice commands have always been a Watchtower functionality.” Bruce’s gaze is steady, smoldering, his hands curled over the console chair’s armrests. 

“Why didn’t I know about—“

“Hal.” Bruce cuts him off, standing up and backing Hal into the console with the movement. This close, he hardly has to lean in to find Hal’s mouth with his own, kissing Hal with the kind of dedication Hal would call eagerness and Bruce would likely call determination. Whatever it is, it leaves them both breathless. When they can afford a sliver of space between their mouths, and not much else, Bruce breathes, “If you want me to get on my knees and blow you, you'll get us to your room. _Now_.”

It is, hands down, the fastest Hal has ever moved.

 

 


End file.
